This blog began when I chronicled a 3-week family vacation pulling our travel trailer from Texas to Northern California. Packed in with our five unschooled children like sardines in a can, we made it to California without resorting to cannibalism. In fact, we had a great time! So the chronicle continues... no longer on vacation but still groovin' on a great journey.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Shall We Get Reaquainted? I Think We Shall!

It has been a while since my last post. In fact, I think this is the longest I've ever gone without posting. So now it is kind of like calling a friend you really haven't talked to in a long time....too much to say in a short conversation and no time to have a longer one.

Don't let that scare you, though. I have decided on a recap rather than the intricately detailed and somewhat painful sagas to which you've become accustomed.

I'm actually going to do a bullet list. A bullet list! So truly, this is not going to be a novella or anything like that. Just a list of 10 things that have happened or that I'm thinking about. I shall spare you my contemplations about why I've been feeling so blah lately - about how I get to the end of the day (every day) and look around and realize I haven't accomplished anything. I could write about how I'm currently feeling very overwhelmed by the house, the laundry, the garden, the yard, and the lack of time to do some homeschooling activities the way I'd like to do them. I could go on about how I feel that everyone else's needs and desires come before my own, or about how I sometimes feel as if there is no "me" left. About how the little ones won't stop talking to me and making me the center of their relative universes and the older ones are talking less and creating their own universes that definitely do NOT revolve around me and about how the middle kid is such a stereotypical middle kid that I don't even know where his universe is, sometimes. But that would be a downer.

Instead I will get on with the bullet list. I bet I scared you there for awhile, didn't I?

1. EASTER. We did it. Sorta. We hunted eggs and then we went over to my dad's for Passover (even though Passover was technically over - we obviously don't pay attention to a lot of rules and bylaws of holidays). Jules is on the left, Joel is flirting with a garden gnome, Camille is being her wiggly jiggly giggly self, Ellie is trying to remain composed among the general mayhem, and the guy on the right is not Angus Young - just Jasper's version of "dressed up".

2. WYSONG JOPLIN PIANO COMPETITION. Went to McKinney, Texas (just north of Dallas)for it. Ellie won it. She won $1,000.00 to be specific. It was a lovely competition....they treat the finalists like royalty with a reception and recitals and food and other comforts. Ellie even had a "patron" whose gorgeous home served as a practice facility and calm and peaceful place of preparation. The judge is the head of the piano department at Eastman School of Music, one of the schools Ellie is interested in. So it was a good weekend and we had some awesome mother/daughter time. Stayed at a Hilton Garden in Allen and enjoyed service beyond belief.

3. ODYSSEY OF THE MIND STATE TOURNAMENT. We went to Houston for it. The high school team I coached came in 1st place AND won a Ranatra Fusca for extreme creativity. Now they will advance to the World Finals in Michigan. Super exciting and awesome. The middle school team placed 4th and had a great time. We stayed at a Hilton Garden and were treated like crap. This would require an entire post to itself and I am SO RESISTING THE URGE TO DO IT RIGHT HERE AND NOW UNTIL YOUR EYES GLAZE OVER.

This is the high school team.

This is the middle school team. I asked 9 Texans if she got any pics where they didn't all look like Children of the Corn and she said, "got nothin' but ax murderers in my pics...." I think they were trying to look logical or something (Jules plays Mr. Spock)....or maybe they are all going to come and kill me in my sleep. Hard to tell. 4. PROM. Ellie went. With her friend, Cody, who is one of Grilled Cheese Chick's shaggy boys (not pictured above - duh), and Katie, who is 9 Texan's kid and is pictured above. The girls are beautiful! She had a great time. Yes, she is homeschooled and yes, there is a homeschool prom, put on by a Christian homeschool cooperative. They invite all homeschooled 11th and 12th graders, even if they're not members of the cooperative (we're not)or they're not Christian (we're not). That makes them lovely people and I should really write a note to someone telling them how grateful I am that they go to all this trouble every year to provide all these kids with a truly exceptional prom experience. The theme was Phantom of the Opera and the location was a pretty ritzy country club. It included a really nice buffet where they wasted a ton of shrimp on unappreciative non-shrimp eaters such as my vegetarian kid and her vegetarian date. They had the organ playing the Phantom Theme and spectacular decorations.

5. I am EXHAUSTED and there will be nooooo break for for another few weeks. And instead of Odyssey being over....I will be preparing for the humongous drive from Texas to Michigan with 6 teenagers and a u-haul full of their stuff. The World Tournament is an experience of a lifetime, though. Joel has never been and he is thrilled beyond words. Ellie's been twice, but she is thrilled for Joel. She says it will be fun because it will be like doing it for the first time (through Joel's eyes). I'm going to miss Camille's ballet demonstration while I'm in Michigan and my heart is broken into a zillion pieces over this. Jeff is just hoping he can figure out how to get her hair in a bun.

6. Some guy offered us $400 if we let him harvest our wildflower seeds from our front pasture. He says it will not reduce our wildflower show next spring - hope he's right.

7. I'm rooting for Casey on American Idol.

8. I'm tired of facebook status updates being about Obama and people praying for his death. I'm not going into it but Cheesy did and you can read it on her blog.

9. I started working out again and it felt really great and then I quit and now I don't want to start up because it has been long enough that it will feel like starting over. I have to do something soon or my breasts are going to require their own zip code.

10. There are lots of reasons why I homeschool and the state of Texas has recently given me more. You can read them HERE. Sometimes I'm amused by the craziness of Texas, and sometimes a tad bit proud of its continuing quest to be the wackiest state in the union (or out of the union since some of us want to secede and some of us think we never really joined up).But sometimes? I'm just embarrassed.Signing Off as a Pooped Sardine Mama